Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.

The Spitzer Space Telescope came to the end of its mission at the end of January 2020. In this Collection, we celebrate the legacy of Spitzer with a variety of broad Review Articles, interviews and comments with Spitzer mission architects and users, and related research that has appeared in the pages of Nature Astronomy.

Latest Research

Two sources of variability are reported in extreme horizontal branch (EHB) stars found in globular clusters, both related to the action of weak magnetic fields: large surface spots and very energetic flares. EHB stars in clusters can thus be linked to EHB field stars, and beyond, to other stars with radiative envelopes.

Galactic close encounters can induce gravitational effects in the participants. Here Ruiz-Lara et al. have reconstructed the star formation history of the region of our Galaxy close to the Sun, finding that three recent visits of the neighbouring Sagittarius dwarf galaxy have resulted in well-defined episodes of star formation.

Different plasma modes in various Galactic environments are identified on the basis of a synchrotron polarization analysis. These results open up the study of interstellar turbulence and demonstrate its importance in all relevant processes including cosmic ray transport and star formation.

Simulations show that turbulent heating at the solar surface randomly evaporates material to the corona, naturally reproducing the formation of long, fibril-like threads within solar filaments in the solar corona and their counterstreamings.

Without an intrinsic magnetic field, Mars’s magnetosphere is induced by direct interaction between its atmosphere and the solar wind. The mapping of the associated current system, obtained by the MAVEN spacecraft, unveils its convective-driven nature and displays various structural differences compared to Earth.

News & Comment

eROSITA, a new X-ray telescope currently performing an all-sky survey of unprecedented depth, aims to provide insights into dark energy, dark matter, black holes and perhaps new phenomena that have so far been invisible.

Key questions about ice on the red planet, its climate record and its potential for habitability were the subject of the seventh edition of the International Conference on Mars Polar Science and Exploration, held for the first time in the Southern Hemisphere.

The discovery of four bright fast radio bursts with accurate localization on the sky and association with nearby galaxies enabled a statistical estimate of the baryon content in the intergalactic medium and intervening galaxy halos by measuring the amount of ionized gas towards these sources.